Despite the courts ruling declaring strikes as “illegal”, workers at Athens Metro decided to launch another 24-hour strike on Thursday, January 24th 2013. For the eight consecutive day.

Urban train ISAP/HSAP and Tram: work stoppage between 12 o’clock and 4 p.m.

Blue buses: work stoppage from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Trolley and Proastiakos will operate as usual.

According to website Athens Transport, investigation by prosecutor is expected to be concluded by Friday. Greek government has sent an ultimatum to striking workers to end their strike and ordered an legla investigation as to whether Metro workers have committed any legal crimes by disobeying court orders.

One million Athenians use the metro, the urban train and the tram on a daily basis – unless they’re on strike…

People strike illegally all over the world after governments make it illegal for them to strike. At least it was just for 24 hours. I’ve been upset at transit strikes in places I’ve lived in. One time it was a surprise strike. I was on my way to work and crossed two cities. One had the strike and I had to walk over 2 hours to get to work. That is playing real dirty for nobody knew and couldn’t even make other arrangements. Another time I lived in a place where the transit strike lasted a full 4 months in an area with millions of people with many using the service daily. It didn’t impact me too much for I didn’t take transit to work then, but it was extremely bad for a lot of people. If people want to strike for 24 hours here and there there is nothing wrong with it and it should be illegal to put a ban on such strikes, especially if they let the public know beforehand they will be striking, but if it will last for months in a row that is something else.

Now, before anybody gets on their high horse and accuses me of trying to either justify or condemn this strike, the following is not a comment on the strike, but a comment on Antonis comment

disobeying court orders” might NOT be illegal??? Wow…

Many legal systems have a concept called “Legal Excuse” which does indeed, under specific circumstance, allow for a normally unlawful act to be considered lawful. An example would be somebody without any means taking food from a shop in order to survive. Normally we would say “Theft”, the legal excuse would be “Need to survive”.
The real question here is “Does the law seek to serve or does it seek to rule?”
If it seeks to rule, then, in my opinion, the law must be challenged every time, with every means possible, lawful or otherwise. If the law seeks to serve, then it must be supported with every means possible.
Unfortunately, in reality, the law both rules and serves. It rules the poor and serves the rich. And that is where the real problem lies…